After Muzaffarnagar riots, Jats gravitating towards BJP in Western UP; SP real loser

LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party’s aim of winning 40 Lok Sabha seats in UP and thereby playing a larger role at the Centre after the next general election looks distant with the sudden change in equations after the Muzaffarnagar riots. Chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s party is now staring at a washout in the western parts of the state. The Jats were never really part of its core vote bank and the SP had been trying to add them to its support base. It wanted to build a winning combination around its core Muslim votes with Jat backing and thereby forge a winning combination.

The breakdown of the Jat-Muslim combination in western UP, where both have a sizeable population, spells trouble for the Rashtriya Lok Dal of Ajit Singh. The RLD has five MPs in the current Lok Sabha and had aligned with the Congress to put together a Jat-Muslim combination. That equation has been broken.

If the last week saw Muslim anger against the government spilling over, the Jats accused the police of victimisation and have now started coming out openly against the government.

“The Jat community had been feeling sidelined since the 2012 assembly polls, which saw only four Jat MLAs being elected,” said Sudhir Panwar, a Lucknow University professor. The BSP is pinning its hopes on a Dalit-Muslim combination but observers say the BJP will have an edge in any electoral contest.

The SP, BSP and Congress are wooing the Muslims, which will push Jats, who constitute about 17% of voters in western Uttar Pradesh, towards the BJP.